Zero-K v1.0.10.8

A moment of free time spawns a flurry of much needed fixes. Pathing should be improved. New wreck models by psimyn.

Fixes

• Outlaw decloaks while firing using the on/off toggle.
• Rogue stands higher and is now much less prone to friendly fire.
• Units no longer decloak when they vigorously bump wrecks.
• Fixed bomber jamming.
• Fixed Stiletto aiming AI. It can now be left to it's own devices if you do not feel the need to specify bombing run direction.
• Blackdawn footprint 2x2 -> 3x3
• Fixed some amphibious unit deaths, they were gibing to easily.

Pathing

Increased Tank, Vehicle, Ship and Hover deceleration. They should become stuck less often.

Increase Tank and Vehicle slopemod to that of Hovercraft. They are now slower when climbing ramps. This change aims to make Tanks and Vehicles avoid areas which they can become stuck.

Applied a fix which should improve global pathfinding and make ramps update faster.

Balance

Detriment:

• Shoulder weapon replaced with old vertical launch missile. The missile smooths terrain.

The changes to Rapier and Gnat are from 6 days ago.

Gnat:

• Cost 70 -> 90
• Speed 8 -> 7.5
• Damage 320 -> 400
• HP 175 -> 300
• EMP time 7s -> 2.5s
• Reduced strafe distances so it is consistently within range
• Dramatically reduced accuracy. It is much worse against small units and turrets.

Rapier:

• Range 340 -> 360

Other

• Added psimyn's wreck models for Angler, Archer, Duck, Djinn and Racketeer
• Display DPS widget disables on F5 (gui hide).

quote: Increase Tank and Vehicle slopemod to that of Hovercraft. They are now slower when climbing ramps.

surely is simply disguised attempt to nerf flash!

hooray

Dont believe them! They are feeding you LIES!

Simply to put its disguise to lower fuel consumption.

Its crysis and with oil getting more and more expensive they decided to make cars engine's smaller -> less horse power -> less fun driving. As side effect cars are slower on hilly terrains -> gets less stuck.

And they think we will buy this as reason to lower engines horse power...

Not a pretense to achieve a nerf. It would be nice if we could have lower slope mod. I think this change should make vehicles act better around obstructions so it is good to test.

My general observations on vehicle pathing:
-Sometimes they turn left/right and bump right into something, when a curve in other direction would have cleared the obstacle.
-On terrain edges, often this happens:

Vehicle takes the corner too much on the inside, gets stuck.
I see the idea how slopemod is supposed to keep vehs further away but does not seem to work. Screenshot from v1.0.10.8
Slopemod probally only makes a difference on "soft" terrain edges:

But those soft hills pathed okay-ish before.
-In a group, pathing is sometimes a bit better: The vehicles push each other around corners. Though sometimes all clump up.
-Buildings as obstacles behave similiar to terrain edges but bump the vehicles away. Can be good or bad: Generally vehs are less likely to come to a complete hold but sometimes "scrape" along buildings (eg windmill lines) which makes them superslow, also endless bump circle.

tl;dr:
imo in none of these situations changing slopemod helps.

Buildings do present a hard edge but are handled completely differently by unit physics. Things can bump along buildings but come to a dead stop on impassable terrain.

There is a common mid point between hard and soft edges. It happens on ramps, a good example is the little holes in Titan Duel.

Down with the pessimism! Engine pathing is constantly improving! In the olden days, units would get stuck in themselves, not just terrain.

Also, the Party invented helicopters.

Perhaps a gadget that causes "stuck" units to tumble downhill would help? I mean, it would be problematic when a unit has been accidentally pushed off a cliff into a trench, but it would improve that unit's odds of being left in an area in which it could move. That would be particularly effective for beached ships, since generally "downhill" for boats would lead them to viable terrain.

Even if a Spring engine update fixes the pushing mechanism to avoid pushing units into immobilizing terrain, this gadget would be useful for victims of impulse weaponry.

Once a unit is stuck, it's not like pathing is happening anymore is it?